


Remember Me

by Nahmar



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Dementia, Read at Your Own Risk, lots of sadness, this is a very sad fic, this is what I came up with half at a mental hospital and half at therapy sessions and school
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-22
Updated: 2016-03-21
Packaged: 2018-05-28 07:36:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6320329
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nahmar/pseuds/Nahmar





	Remember Me

There was something wrong with him. I mean, I loved him and all, and that’s why I knew there was something that had to be off about him. He was beginning to forget things on the regular, and sometimes went out of the house and called me after getting lost in the city he called home. So now, we were sitting in the waiting room of a doctor's office with his mother and her boyfriend. His step-father figure, but he never was there much. A businessman and someone who never cared enough about other people to show his face out of compassion. But when something was this serious, he decided to show his face. So yeah, this was important for us. And there I was, holding onto his knee with clammy hands and sweat beads rolling down my temples. I was scared for him. For his outcome. Of course, I had good reason to, but maybe I was overreacting a little bit. The disease was different for everybody. If he even had it in the first place. 

I went to scoot my chair back, and my finger felt a dried up wad of gum, and I flinched, letting out an aggravated sigh. There was no way that this was going to turn out any better than I could imagine it going. He was scared, I was scared, we were scared. 

“You brought the letter, right?” He asked me, and I nodded nervously, chewing on a fingernail from the clean hand. If everything here went wrong and didn’t go as we were hoping, then we brought letters for each other to let each other know how to prepare for the next few months ahead. Of course mine was as cheesy as I was. I had no clue what his could contain, but I didn’t want to find out either. 

“Hey, calm down, okay? Even if it turns out to be worst case scenario, we’ll be alright. Your promised me you wouldn’t go anywhere and I did the same.” He tried to assure me. It wasn’t fair. Even if he was okay and nothing was wrong with him, nothing would ever be the same between us. He would think I was extremely paranoid and be frustrated with me because I was such an over reactor.

His mother looked over at me with sympathetic eyes. Going into the medical field, she had to have learned a bit more than the basic knowledge of most average people. Which meant she would know better than I would if he had it. And if she had expressed this much concern about it, then it was probably true. All signs pointed to yes, he had it, but we couldn’t be sure. They warned us on the phone that this was going to be a long day of testing and questions, but his mother insisted on coming along anyways. She was a good woman and I respected her for that.

“Styles?” A nurse called out to the room filled with our family and a few other people who looked almost as miserable as I did. He stood up and waited for the rest of his party to follow along with standing up behind him, but the other man stayed behind.

Harry looked defeated as he saw the man stay behind, but his mother lead him along with a hand on his back. 

We followed the woman down a small hallway and to a little room with a scale and a blood pressure monitor. 

The nurse was almost as stoic as his father, and she wrapped the cuff around his muscular bicep, and pressed a yellow button to activate the machine. 

“Do you know your height?” She asked, and he chewed on his lip for a minute before shaking his head. I held back a sigh that had welled up in the back of my throat, and took a slow deep breath. 

Once the machine was done taking the blood pressure, the nurse had him stand up and had him back up against a wall with a height chart. She took down his height and then had him stand on a scale and weighed him. Once all the basics were done, she had him answer a few questions to get everything started off first.

“What did you have to eat last night?”

“Louis, my boyfriend over there,” He said motioning towards where I was leaning on the doorway to the little room. I waved briefly and she looked back to him as he began speaking again. “He made me a delicious chicken stuffed with..” He said, drifting off. He was thinking really hard and finally gave up, sighing and looking extremely disappointed with himself for not being able to remember what it was completely. He looked back at me and I interrupted his thinking to chime in. 

“Stuffed with mozzarella. Side of mash. Homemade.” I say, and he clicked his fingers together. The nurse was not pleased with me interrupting his thinking, but I could’ve told her that he never remembers and just sits there thinking about what it could be for hours.

“That’s right! Yes, that’s what it was. Mozzarella.”

She finished writing whatever she was putting down on her chart and continued on to the next question.

“Who was your last email to?”

What kind of a question was that? I couldn’t even remember who my last email was to, so how was he supposed to remember? No one even used email much anymore! 

Of course he didn’t remember. He just shook his head and she moved onto the next one on her list. 

He began to grow frustrated with all the questions, and his eyes begged me to just take him home. It was honestly the most pathetic thing I had ever put him through, but I did it out of love. I wanted to see if there was anything we could do if he had it. I mean, I knew there was no cure, but he had to get better. He couldn’t be permanently like this. I wanted the old Harry back.

“Do you find yourself getting lost frequently even in places you used to know?” She asked, and he lowered his head down and nodded, his long hair falling in his face. He looked completely humiliated. I never meant to do this to him, but I needed to be assured he didn’t have it. I needed to know he didn’t have the gene. 

Anne looked so sad, and I could see the tears welling up in her eyes. She held her hand up to her mouth and there was only the sound of the pen scribbling something down on the clipboard. It was the scratch down the sheet of silence that ripped it in two. It was awful. Knowing she was writing that Harry was “incapable” on that piece of paper under the spot that says “Can navigate on own.”

Anne refused to take a breath, and I stood there right along with her. I wanted to comfort her in some way, but I didn’t want to break her mourning for the shadow of her son’s former self. She was coming to terms with the fact he would never truly be the same again, and that was wearing her down and aging her right in front of my eyes. Tears lined her eyes and two spilled over, and I wrapped my arm around her, and she practically collapsed in my arms, her head finding its way into my shoulder. Harry looked up from where he was hanging his head, and he began to sob along with his mother. The nurse had probably been seeing this on a daily basis, and she looked completely unphased. It pissed me off that she could have no emotion for this kind of thing. Watching a whole family break down because of a disease that she kept asking question after question about. Symptoms after symptoms came up and she just continued to scribble down meaningless word after word. It was tiring.

“How often do you find yourself-” She began.

“Stop! Just.. just stop. He can’t take much more. He’s not ready. He obviously won’t remember. Can’t you just tell us by now if he has it or not?” I ask with venom dripping from my tongue as I spat out the words, holding Anne in my arms. I had to be strong for harry, but at the same time, I was only so strong myself. I wasn’t ready or prepared for any of this, no matter how many nights I had been talking myself up to this for his sake. He was my one and only, and I was beginning to lose him. 

Everything in the air felt ice cold, and the tears from Anne’s eyes felt like ice on my shoulder. It stung when it made the contact on my skin, and I couldn’t help but tense up a bit with each drop. It hurt to see Anne cry, and it hurt even worse to see Harry try to pull himself back together. 

“All of the signs point to yes so far, but if you want a proper diagnosis, you’ll have to wait on the doctor. Just head to the third room on the right.” She said, scratching something down again on the paper and pointing with the end of her pen to the direction we needed to go in. 

Anne grabbed her purse and lead the way. I felt like now there was no point in Harry taking any more questions since he was going to have it in his head that he had the disease. I took his hand, and it felt cold. He was putting up a wall, and I could tell. He had the letter in his back pocket, and I knew it. He was ready for this. More than I ever was or could be. He had tear streaks down his cheeks, and it upset me to hear him sniveling like this. He was extremely upset and there was nothing I could do to help him out. He was going to have his mind set on how diseased he was. But the truth was that he was still the same Harry. For now, at least. He just had trouble remembering things and getting lost. I still loved him, and he was still my boyfriend. He just needed to remember that much at least. 

The next hour and a half consisted of the doctor flashing pictures to him, asking more questions about random things, and then about twenty minutes later, asking questions about the pictures. Doctor DeSamuels had him read a few passages and then take a test on them, on which he scored an eighty six percent. Barely passing, but passing at least. He was growing tired by about six in the evening, and we were finally done after one last set of questions. This time, they were dark questions.

“If anything worsens, who will be taking care of you?” He asked, and Harry looked up at his mother. Instinct, I supposed. Like a little kid. A child who can’t help but rely on an answer from his mother instead of thinking on his own. 

“Louis.” He said, confirming after his mother nodded to him. That came to me as a shock because I had always imagined him living with Anne if anything ever happened to him to the point where he would have to live with dependencies. A part of me was joyful that he had chosen me to be the one to be in his corner if anything did indeed happen, but the other part of me secretly dreaded it. I needed to have some time out of the house too, even now, so thinking about doing everything for him really wasn’t my first option. But I would definitely take care of him with happiness if it came down to it. I had promised him that much.

“Would you be interested in any sort of treatment like a surgical trial?” DeSamuels asked, which confirmed my suspicions. He had it. Harry’s face dropped from the proud smile to the most fear-ridden expression I had seen on him yet. It was written all over saying that he wasn’t ready to even think about something like that. But I can see where the doctor would need us to answer now. He needed it documented in case Harry could completely forget all of this, and we started some sort of treatment, we needed to show him his words would be written down so we could continue a trial. 

It wasn’t even a question for me. I would’ve jumped in and said yes if it was my decision. He looked back at Anne, and then to me. He needed to make this decision on his own. These were his wishes, not ours. It was something of a dilemma for him, having to make this decision by himself, but I certainly didn’t want it to be a thing later on for him where he halfway through the trial one day decides to quit and they take his word for it and then he regrets it another day later. I knew it was bound to happen if I made the decision for him. 

“I.. uhh…” He spoke quietly and in a mumble, as he pushed his hair past his face and thought for a minute. “Yes.” He said. “But, does this mean I have it? Is this a final diagnosis?” He asked, and the doctor finished writing down on his chart and held it to his chest while he drew in a deep breath. 

“Well, Harry, I’m sorry but I am going to have to say yes. I’m diagnosing you with at least Dementia.” He said, and Anne grabbed onto my wrist tightly, pink nails digging into my skin. She and I both agreed that this couldn’t be happening. Where was my Harry going? Where had my Hazza gone?


End file.
